Florida Literally Scraps Touch-Screen Voting 177
Kaseijin writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is getting his wish. The New York Times reports the state will replace touch-screen voting machines with optical-scan models by July 1, 2008 — the most aggressive timetable of any jurisdiciton rethinking this approach to voting. The touch-screen machines most likely will be sold to other jurisdictions or stripped for parts."
great idea (Score:5, Funny)
Much better idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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Assuming you don't want to do something easier than searching for valid elections on these machines. Like looking for honest politicans or extra terrestial intelligence.
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By your logic, we should allow states to allocate their delegates to the Electoral College by coin toss, cockfight, or single combat, if a bunch of political appointees in that state think it's a bright idea.
I think we should rigorously enforce some sort of minimum standard of quality for elections. Above and beyond that, sure, states can choose what brand and type of machines they want. But we all have an interest in making sure that elections are fair, unbiased, and transparent. Auditless electronic voting systems prohibit that by design, and for that reason they ought to be illegal. Leave them for supermarket taste-tests where they belong.
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Here's one reason:
Because people voted to elect people that decided to use that machine?
Sure. But come on, we both know that's a trite answer. There are limits on what sort of stupidity you can vote into place. I'm personally in favor of a minimalist central government, with basically politically autonomous states that only go to the Federal level in order to resolve conflicts between them.
But there are some things that are a legitimate concern of the Federal government, because they have effects that aren't limited purely to the residents of one state. If the residents of one state decide to
And, (Score:2)
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I suppose you could use the systems for some non-critical voting purposes.
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Recovering the money would require a huge lawsuit that the Florida government isn't guaranteed to win.
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Touchscreen "ballot printers" would go a long way toward eliminating overvotes and reducing undervotes (since a voter must be permitted to abstain from a particular race or issue).
As long as the Official Legal Ballot is durable and readable by unaided humans. The human can then manually scan his/her selections on the paper ballot before committing it to the official count. If the touchscreen system failed to record the voter's intent accurately, the voter can place the the machine-printed ballot in a rejection pile and fill in a paper ballot using manual methods (pencil, pen, etc.)
The point is that the voter must be able to audit his/her voting selections on the official legal record before committing it to the secure but open vote counting process.
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Sure, hackers can probably get something on it, but the government doesn't work on that basis.
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I agree. (Score:3, Insightful)
My reason for making the suggestion about transforming DREs into very expensive pencils is that local governments are notorious for their inability to face the economic "sunk cost" problem: They claim that they paid lots of very limited money for the machines and they insist on Getting Their Moneys Worth. They also say that g
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The problem is that ambiguous ballots will still exist. And some percentage will be ambiguous to a court as well. A LOT of ballots
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Throw them out. If the voter doesn't have enough brains to fill a circle in front of a name then chances are he is too stupid to vote. Besides, ambiguous votes always existed, and should exist, since any voter has the right to not vote on some specific issue. To that effect he is entitled to spoiling this section of the ballot (if not the entire ballot, which is also his right.)
A computer sho
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Sure, like your typical Homeowner's Association:
Item 1: Do you
A. think satellite dishes are inappropriate for our community
B. think satellite dishes are unacceptable in our community
They could sell tons of these used voting machines to associations, since it really doesn't matter which way you vote anyway.
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!literally; (Score:2)
crap is a term used to describe waste metal. Old, unwanted metal such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials, are taken to a wrecking yard (known colloquially as scrapyards), where they are processed for later melting into new products.
Even selling them for parts isn't literally scrapping them
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Parts? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Parts? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Parts? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly though, those $5000 machines will probably only sell for $200 tops online.
Re:Parts? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Proprietary firmware on closed system prevents hacker access"
Hm.. Were have I heard that one before?
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The proof is in the pudding. The elections were NOT hacked, because it's not hacking if you have a password.
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ah my eyes! (Score:3, Funny)
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That's exactly how it worked the last time I voted. I marked the paper, the paper was scanned by the counting computer, the counting computer gave me a receipt to tell me what candidate it had counted. No no manual counting (which is rife for abuse) unless needed, and I get a verification
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In Orange County, FL they were BRAGGING on TV abut manually seperating out the "non machine counted" votes from their optical scan machines. As if THEY could tell. I still want them arrested for vote fraud.
And BTW, that generated 50 illegal votes for Al Gore.
GREAT: accurate, fast, anonymous, auditable (Score:2)
It wont matter (Score:2)
Re:It wont matter (Score:5, Funny)
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More important than rapid counting to make the 11pm news.
Literally? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Literally? (Score:4, Funny)
Gah, don't be so literal.
Re:Literally? (Score:4, Informative)
Auditing. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Do you trust the counters? (Score:4, Informative)
You are aware that it was Bush's campaign that filed the first court challenges to the Florida ballots, right?
I'm sure you'll happily apply the entire rest of your comment to Bush now that you know he's the one who caused the inevitable Caesar.
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Their was tons of voter disenfranchisement, sp
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Under Florida law EVERYONE may request an absentie ballot, no questions asked. So instead of waiting for 45 min to an hour (in a Republican area TOO!) my wife and I are on permanent absentie ballots. No muss, no fuss, no wait.
As for your claim of voter disenfranchisement? Horse hockey. It was investigated and found to be non existent. It was all made up, and that was even that j****** Jesse Jackson agreeing with that judgement.
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Do they blend? (Score:3, Funny)
Aggh,someone had to ask it.
Paper? (Score:3, Insightful)
As a Canadian, I've never voted with anything other than a paper ballot, and I have never had a reason to question the voting process as a result.
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Pencil and paper.
It Just Works.
Complete audit trail, recounts take from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the election. Yes, if there are several votes taking place at the same time, it's a little more complicated to separate out the different coloured ballots, some of which are always put in the wrong boxes, but hardly a big deal.
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I, too, am a Canadian, and I also don't see why the Americans are making this so complicated.
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How many do you propose. In my county in November 2004, I voted for 54 different things. (President, Congress, Ohio House, Ohio Senate, State board of education, a bunch of judges, a bunch of county executive offices, several county tax authorizations and a lot of municipal tax authorizations.)
Admittedly, that was particularly severe, even for a presidential election.
I've been a pollworker for seve
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It's a good question. The first answer to it is that it's difficult to find pollworkers as it is. (Already a not-insignificant quantity of them are high schoolers drafted by their government teachers.) It's a long 13 hour day, and having to end it and then count all the ballots would make it long and painful--to the point of discouraging pollworker participation.
Though I happen to agree that fast election results is not that important (and I also happen to think that Americans can be much more tolerant o
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Here's one example: Chicago, Illinois, November 2004 [nist.gov]. 10 pages of choices, with 15 elected offices, confirmations of 74 judges, and one referendum. We're talking about 1 or 2 orders of magnitude longer than a Canadian ballot.
I do not support unauditable voting computers. I just wanted to explain why the voting problem is much different in the U. S., and give you some idea w
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Here's one example: Chicago, Illinois, November 2004. 10 pages of choices, with 15 elected offices, confirmations of 74 judges, and one referendum.
When I saw how long it took to download plus what it actually looks like, it reminded me of the "personality test" for your avatar in the old Ultima games, i.e., long, excruciatingly boring and opaquely related to the outcome.
...
I wonder if the American voter knew Lord British had designed their electoral system
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America is the land of opportunity, like the opportunity to question the integrity of the voting process! I hope I've answered your question.
Another benefit of optical scan counting (Score:4, Funny)
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For a more aggressive means of filtration, just remove the list of names...
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I doubt I'm the first person to come up with this, but I've been saying for years that the ballot should be a list of names and a list of offices with blanks by them, in random order. You write in the name you want next to the office you want them for. Thus, without having to invalidate a single ballot you insure that all the votes that "count" come from people who at least have the wherewithal to know who is running for what.
yea the one guy that stumbled on big media publicity wins every office even if he was just running for school board.
I LIKE eVOTING because... (Score:3, Funny)
Why not manual count? (Score:2, Informative)
I would never trust a system like that. At the very least, the machine-counted vote should be confirmed later (but before the election is officially confirmed) by a manual count, no matter if there is a dispute or not.
In Sweden, the ballots are counted by volunteers in the precincts on election night under the supervision of observers from the parties and interested citizens (
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In America, the ballots tend to be larger, sometimes with many candidates and many issues on in a single election. That was the original impetus for using machines: counting would take "too long" for complicated electio
Two things. (Score:2)
And yes there is a shortage.
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I think the problem is that the Americans like to have an awful lot of elections. Most countries, there's just one vote at a time. You get a slip with a list of people's names and party affiliations, you put an X next to one, you fold up your paper and put it in the box, and that night people count them up. Simple.
In America they'll give you a list of people standing for pre
You've been Punk'd (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh you poor beguiled Floridians. You've just been taken for the old bait and switch. If you had paid attention to the debacle of the last presidential election you would know that it was the optical scanners that were compromised, not the touch screens! An in-depth statistical analysis was undertaken by a mathematics professor of the exit polls compared to the "counted" tally. A vast number of anomalies showed up in Ohio in districts with optical scanners. Calculating the odds of those discrepancies show that it was less likely for Bush to have won that election than for him to have been hit by lighting and win the lottery on the same day (paraphrasing of course).
I voted yesterday with pencil and paper (Score:2)
Re:Will the new system be any more reliable? (Score:4, Informative)
There are enough problems with arguments about whether a vote should be counted or not as it is, in any system. With optical scanning of a ballot paper, surely there will be arguments about whether what the scanner counts as a vote or not is actually the correct definition of what is a vote or not? The voting system is likely to be attacked by people who disagree with its definitions whatever it is.
The main advantage of the optical scanning system is it leaves a paper trail. If there is a dispute at the end of the election, it is possible to manually recount the ballots. Compare with the touch-screen voting, where no independent verification is possible. The ballots are also plain pieces of paper, so there's no issue of hanging chads or dislodging chads during a recount as in certain elections in the past.
Re:Will the new system be any more reliable? (Score:5, Informative)
1) you fill them out with a special black pen.
2) if you make a mistake, ask for new sheet and start again.
3) you place it into the optical scanner.
4) Green Light - your ballot is correct and you are done.
5) Red Light - you get a new ballot and start again.
Advantages:
Positive and Negative feedback if the ballot is clean and correct.
Voter SEES what is they choose, clearly.
Disadvantages:
Paper pile. But need only until election is confirmed.
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If there is any doubt as to the accuracy of the machine you can simply do an old style human based count.
This is the most important feature.
You also mention that you could destroy the pile of paper ballots after the election is confirmed. This is an option, but it is also an option to leave them in secure storage in case anyone ever wants a recount at a later date.
The only downside I can think of is that people are unable to deface a ballot as a prote
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As you later note, this is absolutely useless except for making you feel better. You'd do more good writing to the paper before the election.
It's not like you could do this with the touch screen machines either.
I figure the whole problem was caused by old machines and politicians wanting the latest and greatest - latching onto a neat phrase. Optical scanning should be familiar to any adult who's passed high sc
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On the backside?
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How - what happens to ballots that had subtle marks missed by the validator? Now you have big debates over "voter intent". Don't get me wrong, I'm ALL for determining voter intent. However, it should be done by a voting system that unambiguously captures it - not with debates over 5 ballots out of 5 million cast that settles a near-tie.
People SHOULD vote on touch-screens. The system should then spit
Problems Still exist (Score:2)
10) Optical scanners, their communication system, and the central tabulator ALL have been hacked before. (not all models, but most are only less stupidly designed than the touch screens)
9) The scan card itself as far as I know has not been hacked yet. re-scans will not show the errors depending on attack.
8) Districts. There is no algorithm for district definition; its not fixed either. (perhaps fixed is better than adapting to population? Perhaps a proxy voting
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And yes, the human eye would easily see what the person intended to vote, which is what they should have done with the "spoilt"
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I'm all for voter-verified audit trails subject to manual recount.
I don't like optical scan ballots or any kind of paper ballot.
What happens if somebody abstains from voting for a particular office but makes a stray mark that doesn't get picked up by the validator. Now people are arguing about voter intent.
What happens when somebody fills in Gore with 10% intensity and Bush with 20% intensity. The val
Optical scanners (Score:2)
I live (and vote) in NH. When I voted in the 2004 election, I had to feed my ballot into a machine of some kind. I assumed it was scanning the ballot when I did so. It certainly did more than just feed it into the lock box. And it didn't sound like a shredder.
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Its a plus because the human recount can be healed.
Its a minus because a large pile of paper needs to tracked, moved, stored and finally discarded once all is said an done.
The punch was better in the last case, since it was just smaller.
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In addition, it's far easier to handle breakdowns - the markers, whether pen, pencil, or felt, can be replaced quickly and easily. They don't go bad often if they're of a decent quality. Paper ballots are pre-printed and can be replaced. You can have a lot of optical scanners, if one goes down, disregard it's count, feed the b
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Maybe next time there is a perceived problem, congress wont rush headlong into an expensive act with a fasttrack deadline because we have to "do something!"
Sometimes you have to take the time to figure out what the real problems are and address them properly before pissing your money away on waste and potential changes that make things worse. In the case of lever machines and pucnh cards, the replacements were a waste of money and possibly made things worse.
Sadly, the real problems were "figured out" long ago, and Congress merely told jurisdictions to take action quickly.
Unfortunately, there were missteps in many jurisdictions. The reasons for the missteps are up for debate, and are very politically charged, but basically includes:
In short, their inability to execute wasn't due to the timeline - it was
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Having every single district in the country independently evaluate all the options and make its own local decisions is a recipe for inefficiency and inconsistent results.
Well, you're right about the "State's rights" thing. However, the States can and often do work together to make things happen effectively and efficiently.
In this case, those states that worked together seemed to get it right. The states that did their own thing, or worse, let local jurisdictions make their own decisions were the only ones that seemed to have a fiasco.
"States rights" gives states the right to be very smart - or very stupid.
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Bass not biting? So, you been fish'n online, eh?
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This is great news for us Floridians.
now if we can all just use #2 pencils!
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Don't you think your VOTE is worth MORE than a disposable boarding pass?
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